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Although I'm quite new to the pirates part of the forum and am not avare of how thigs here worked in the past, I have some constructive not creative critics about this competition. Yes it can count under the critic part of competition ;)

Somewhere I read that the competition starts this weekend, so I presume the rules will get finalized and won't talk about them (yet). But I am certeanly not very fond of the voting scheme that is presented because of multiple things:

First thing that bothers me is the ammount of points each voter gets. 5 should be maximum and bonus points should be added to a lower number if they are necessary. Or the max ammount you can give to one entry could be limited to lets say 3. Else I think the points will boost some entries too quickly, even though they may not be that much better. The thing is someone can easily pick top 3 entries, but more is more time consuming or hardly anyone does for different reasons. Also we all know the problem of voting for friends, where posts like X points to YGUY - where X is the ammount of points a voter gets and YGUY a friend of the poster might be problematic if giving each voter too many points ... Yes I don't have many friends :(..

The second thing is all the fuss about forum, blog and facebook. I mean why do we have to follow multiple things, when all the information can be gathered in one place. I rarely visit the blog apart from the forums site but I've never seen anything there, that would not be in the forums, make it be either a MOC, competition or anything else. Double work for people maintaining the sites. And if two things weren't enough, there's this facebook thingy. Come one people, I thought this was an adult forum ... not forcing but even encouriging us to use the social networks might give some people different thoughts (and they are not positive). Yes I don't have any social network account but still exist!

Last but not least is the voting for yourself. I understand that it is in a pirates way to do so, but getting a 200% boost for the stupid reasons described above is a bit lame. Also the other competition about the comentaries to the picture might've been a bit off. That's why only a few people voted I guess. Many prefer voting for Mocs to reading a bunch of comentaries and then decideing which one suits them best (Many might only read half of them). I don't know is the pirates community so much smaller or why did competitions like minifigs and D2C get over 5-6 pages of votes.

Please don't get me wrong and I'm sorry if the words used were to harsh. I really appriciate competitions like this and can imagine all the work there is behind the organisation and especially the rewards gathering. There for a big thanks to the organizers is in place! But the mentioned things bothered me and questions like what's up with the cometaries part? Who's going to judge them and how will it work? came to my mind. And then a competition of story writing (I do like it and will enter with something if only I find enough time). But! Won't there be too much reading and not enough people dedicating their time to read it all and vote for it? Is there even a point in entering then? The ammount of rewards is astonishing and someone could make a competition like make a MOC for each of the movies? Imagine the ammount of cool MOCS there could be. After all it's a LEGO forum ... I only suggest that the competitions are organized in a way, so that the entrants don't get the feeling it's not worth participating or that they don't have a slightest chance of winning and so it's as fair and friendly for everyone as possible.

P.S. Sorry for the wall of text, I just thought someone had to point it out. Or is it just me?

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We were looking for a new angle, so we came up with the Seven Seas Contest which was going to be just as big. But unfortunately Zorro's untimely departure from existence created complications we haven't been able to resolve. At this point we are unsure if they ever will be resolved.

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I'm a little confused as to why the creative critic is still going on. What's the point of providing responses to the entries if the creators of those entries can't take any of the advice and make changes?

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I'm a little confused as to why the creative critic is still going on. What's the point of providing responses to the entries if the creators of those entries can't take any of the advice and make changes?

There are still prizes available for best Creative Critic. So the benefit is now for the critics, rather than the entrants.

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But the point (in my opinion) of the creative critics is to try and get the debate going and maybe even enhancing the entries. There is almost no point in writing the critics now since they won't get much reply especially not from the authors because they can't change the entries anymore.

In other words if someone would've written his opinion and even if it was very well written and long, if author and most of other people wouldn't agree with it and nothing is changed in any of that critics direction it's not such a successful critic then? Or is it anyway? Because someone could then be stating huge critical facts in directions that author never wanted to go - completly changing his story in a way the critic wanted. Would he still be after the reward even though his critic did not make much sense?

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There is almost no point in writing the critics now since they won't get much reply especially not from the authors because they can't change the entries anymore.

Boulderdash! In the real world of critique, authors do not get the opportunity to modify their work based on the feedback of critics. They publish their work and the critics run rampant.

Ok, so this isn't exactly the same, but the point is critics who've joined us later in the contest still have the opportunity to express their opinions. If the entrants wanted to use the feedback to improve their entries they should have submitted them earlier.

Also, clever critics who've been participating the whole time will use this as an opportunity to build upon what they've already wrote. If somebody can't think of something useful to add then too bad, because the ones who can will have a greater chance of winning the Creative Critic prizes.

In other words if someone would've written his opinion and even if it was very well written and long, if author and most of other people wouldn't agree with it and nothing is changed in any of that critics direction it's not such a successful critic then? Or is it anyway? Because someone could then be stating huge critical facts in directions that author never wanted to go - completly changing his story in a way the critic wanted. Would he still be after the reward even though his critic did not make much sense?

You're thinking about this way too much. Dude, it's just a bit of fun. If the critic feedback is useful then good, if not, then too bad.

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So this period is more of a review-like critique (two-minifigure hands up kind of thing) rather than constructive feedback, since the writers can't change anything. It's a little odd, but *shrug* okay. I've only got one more story to review.

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Personally, the only part I understood about this contest was to build something, so thats what I did , I have no idea about this critics thing, but I don't really mind if I don't "get" it, or don't take part, these contests are more just for fun then actually about winning.

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Personally, the only part I understood about this contest was to build something, so thats what I did , I have no idea about this critics thing, but I don't really mind if I don't "get" it, or don't take part, these contests are more just for fun then actually about winning.

Well that's right. The idea is not so everybody enters everything, we're giving you a choice between building a MOC, writing a story or being a critic, but if somebody wants to do all three then that's fine too.